She dragged herself onto the beach, battered, cold, and angry. She looked back at the small boat, even then being dashed against the rocks, tossed about by the powerful surf. She had drifted all through the rest of that fateful day, all through the night and the better part of the next morning as well. She had meant to go right from the battle to the nearest spot she could find to land the boat, to then run off and find some help, and lead the charge back to Pireth Tulme. The powrie ship was barely out of sight when her wounds overtook her, pains and aches she didn't even realize she had suffered. The heat of battle had left her body and unconsciousness had descended over her like some great hunting bird, wings out wide to block the light of day.

She had awakened that night, drifting somewhere in the gulf, praying that the currents had not pushed her out into the open Mirianic. Luck was with her, though, for the coastline remained in sight, towering black mountains marking the southern horizon. It had taken Jill hours to manage to row the craft near shore and then to find some place where she could put in. She had settled for a narrow inlet, but as soon as she entered, she found that many sharp rocks were in the water, lurking right below the surface. Jill worked the small boat hard, but understood the futility. So she shed her red Coastpoint jacket and her heavy boots and went over the side, fighting the undertow every inch of the way through the icy water.

The rocks took her boat.

She didn't recognize any landmarks but figured she must be somewhere west of Pireth Tulme on the north coast of the Mantis Arm. Her suspicions were confirmed when she moved inland, found a road, and then, an hour of walking later, a signpost pointing the way, three miles hence, to Macomber. Jill found herself circumventing the town and approaching it from the west, not from the east the way any stragglers fleeing Pireth Tulme would. She tried to straighten her still-damp clothes, but realized that she would be conspicuous indeed to any, walking as she was without boots, and without the dirtied, calloused feet of a peasant woman. And though she was not wearing the telltale red jacket, a woman dressed in a simple white shirt, tan pants, and bare feet was not a common sight. Jill wished that she had a cloak, at least, to gather closely about her.

She got more than a few curious looks from the townsfolk as she passed the fairly sizable settlement of more than three score buildings, some two stories high. Some folk pointed, all whispered, more than a few turned their shoulders and scurried away, and it seemed to the young woman that they were on edge. Perhaps word of the disaster had preceded her.

These suspicions were bolstered by the snatches of conversation Jill caught, words of a contingent of Kingsmen riding hard to the east. She nodded to herself; she should go out and join the force, should go to Pireth Tulme to avenge --

The thought hit Jill like a cold slap. To avenge what? Her comrades? The letch Miklos Barmine? Gofflaw, whom she'd imagined killing several times herself?

She found a tavern, its sign too worn for her even to make out the name, though the image of a foaming mug was clear enough. Before she entered, a familiar voice, raised in dire warning, assaulted her.

"What demons do we invite into our midst?" the man inside cried, and Jill knew before she saw him that he was surely standing atop a table, one finger pointed high into the air.

She went in expecting a brewing row, but found instead that the mad friar, this time, had a fairly attentive audience.

And a large one; there had to be forty people inside, filling the tavern from wall to wall. Jill sifted through the crowd to get to the bar, started to order a mug of ale, but then realized she had no money. She turned instead, put her elbows on the bar, and watched the monk and, more particularly, the reactions, of his audience.

She heard whispers of a fight, of goblins, some said, though others more accurately named the enemy powries. Estimates of the enemy force ranged from a thousand warriors to a thousand ships full of warriors.

Jill wanted to tell them that it was but one captured sailing vessel and no more than five barrelboats, but she kept quiet, fearing to reveal too much of herself and also thinking it would do these folk good to be afraid.

The mad friar apparently shared her feelings, for his speech became more dire, more frantic, as if he envisioned an army of monsters marching down the road, right to the border of Macomber.

The fever reached a critical point, and then, all of a sudden, it broke. The barkeep came around the bar with a heavy club, moving pointedly for the fat monk. "Enough from you," he warned, waving his weapon. "Whatever happened is the business of the Kingsmen, and not for the folk of Macomber!"

"All the world must prepare!" the fat man retorted, throwing his arms out wide, inviting the people to join.

But it was too late; he had pushed past the fear and into the realm of anger, and when the barkeep called for assistance, the man found no shortage of volunteers.

The mad friar put up a terrific fight, tossing men about, howling about his "preparedness training!" In the end, though, predictably, the monk was sailing out the door to land unceremoniously in the street.

Jill was beside him at once, on one knee as he sorted himself out. He reached into a pocket of his robe and produced a small flask, popping the top and sucking a huge swig. He did well to stifle his belch and looked at Jill as if embarrassed.

"Potion of courage," he explained dryly. "Ho, ho, what!"

Jill regarded him sourly, then rose and offered an arm. "You are consistent," she chided.

The friar looked at her more closely. He knew he had seen her before, but he could not place her. "Have we met?" he asked finally.

"Once," Jill said, "in a place not so far away."

"I would not forget so pretty a face," the friar insisted.

Jill was too bedraggled to blush or even to care. "Perhaps if I were still wearing my red jacket," she said, though she could hardly believe she had just admitted her position to this man.

He paused for a long moment, then his face brightened in recognition -- and then it darkened immediately as he realized the implications. "Y-your home," he stuttered, as if not knowing which direction to go. "Pireth Tulme."

"Never would I call Pireth Tulme my home," Jill retorted: The mad friar started to speak again, but she stopped him with an upraised hand. "I was there," she said grimly. "I saw."

"The rumors?"

"Powries," she confirmed. "Pireth Tulme is no more."

The friar held out his flask, but Jill refused. He nodded and put it back under the folds of his weathered robes, his expression more serious. "Come with me," he bade her. "I have an ear for what you might need to say."

Jill considered the offer for a long moment, then moved away with the man to a room he had rented in a small inn on the outskirts of Macomber. He expected her to speak of desertion, but of course, her tale, spoken simply and truthfully, was far different. She saw respect mounting in the man's brown eyes and knew that he was a friend, knew that he would not turn her in to the military authorities, that he held as little respect for them as did she.

When she finished, when she explained that she was glad again to hear his voice and could now appreciate his dire warnings, the friar smiled comfortingly and put his hand over hers.

"I am Brother Avelyn Desbris, formerly of St.-Mere-Abelle," he confided, and Jill understood she was probably the first person he had told his true name in a long, long time. "It would seem that we are both dispossessed."

"Disappointed would be a better word," Jill replied.

A dark cloud passed over Avelyn's face. He nodded. "Disappointed indeed," he said softly.

"I have told you my tale," Jill prompted.

It came out in a burst of emotion Avelyn had not known since that night he had cried for his dead mother. He told Jill much -- more than he would have ever believed he could confide -- holding back only the specifics of the Ring Stones, the secret island, the method and fatal result of his escape, and the fact that he carried with him a stolen cache of powerful magic. Those things did not seem paramount to Avelyn, anyway, not when weighed against the tragedy of the Windrunner, the loss of his dear Dansally Comerwick.

"She told you her name," Jill put in quietly, and Avelyn's brown eyes misted at the realization that this woman could understand the significance of that.

"But you have not," Avelyn said to her.

"Jill," she answered after a short. hesitation.

"Just Jill," she assured him.

"Well, Just Jill," Brother Avelyn said with a widening smile, "it would seem we are two lost lambs."

"Yes, mad brother Avelyn Desbris," she replied in the same singsong voice, "two lost lambs in a forest of wolves."

"Pity the wolves, then!" Avelyn cried, "Ho, ho, what!"

They shared laughter, a relief of tension both of them so desperately needed Jill for her recent trials and Avelyn because he had spoken openly at last of his dark past, had relic the candles about those desperate images and feelings that had driven him out on the road.

"Piety, dignity, poverty," the monk said distastefully when he had caught his breath.

"The credo of the Abellican Church," Jill replied.

"The lie," Avelyn retorted. "I saw little piety beyond simple rituals, found little dignity in murder, and poverty is not a thing the masters of St.- Mere-Abelle tolerate." He gave a snort, but Jill knew she had him beaten on this point.

"Ever vigilant, ever watchful," she recited dryly, and Avelyn recognized her words as the motto of the Coastpoint Guards. "Tell that to the powries!"

They laughed again, all the louder, using the very sound of mirth as a shield against tears.

Jill spent the night in Avelyn's room; the monk, of course, acting the part of a perfect gentlemen. He considered the tale he had told her, his life's story, and then looked to regard himself, the extra hundred pounds, the battered appearance.

"Ah, Jill," he lamented. "You should have seen me in my idealistic youth. What a different man I was then, before I saw the terrible truth of the world."

His thoughts hung on those words for a long, long while, and then it struck him that if he were to truly call this woman his friend, he would have to search hard for a part of himself that he had thought long lost. To be a friend to Jill, to be a proper companion to anyone, would mean recovering some of that idealism, some of that belief that the world was not so dark and terrible and that, with effort, it might get even better.

"Yes," the monk whispered over the sleeping woman, "we'll find our way together."

The next morning, they purchased some supplies, including a short sword, boots, and a warm cloak for Jill, and then they walked out of Macomber together, down the road to the west, ignoring the stares and whispers, feeling somehow as if they shared a secret and a wisdom the rest of the world, fools all, could never comprehend.

That bond alone held Jill together with Brother Avelyn over the first weeks of their journey; they were siblings, Avelyn insisted, two alone against the encroaching darkness. Jill accepted a large part of that argument, but hardly considered herself brother to the mad friar. The man drank almost constantly, and whatever town they entered, Avelyn found some way to get into a fight, often brutal. So it was in the town of Dusberry along the Masur Delaval halfway between Amvoy and Ursal. Avelyn was in the tavern, as usual, standing atop a table, spouting warnings and curses. Jill came in just as the fight broke out, two dozen men swinging at the closest body, not bothering to ask if it was enemy or ally. In these general rows, as opposed to the occasions when all in the bar teamed up against the monk, Avelyn more than held his ground. The huge bear of a man tossed his attackers with ease, punched and twisted deftly, hollering "Ho, ho, what!" every time he felled another.

Jill came in hard and fast, simply to defend herself as she made her way to her comrade. She, too, could handle the drunken townsfolk without much effort, turning easily as one man lunged for her, walking right past his lumbering reach, then kicking back hard on his instep, sending him down to the floor.

"Must you always?" she asked when she at last reached Avelyn's side.

The monk replied with a wide grin. Then he quickly brushed Jill aside with his right hand, straightening the man who was charging in at her back with a stiff left jab, then knocking him flying with a heavy right cross.

"Ho, ho, what!" Avelyn boomed. "The town will be the better for it!"

He started away, but Jill kicked him hard in the rump. He turned to her, wounded emotionally at least, but she would not back down, pointing resolutely at the door.

It wasn't until they had exited the tavern, the fight raging still, that Avelyn suddenly stopped and looked at his beautiful companion a most curious expression on his face. Not even blinking, he reached under his robes, then quickly retracted his hand.

It was covered in blood.

"My dear Jill," Avelyn said, "I do believe I have been stabbed." His legs started to buckle under him, but Jill caught him and guided him off the main road to a porch in a nearby alley. She thought to leave him there, to run off and find Dusberry's healer -- every small town had one -- but Avelyn caught her by the arm and would not let her go.

Then she saw it. Brother Avelyn produced a grayish-black stone, its polish so deep that it seemed almost liquid, so smooth that Jill felt as if she could slip right into it. Her gaze lingered on the stone for a long while, the young woman sensing there was something extraordinary, something magical about it.

"I need to borrow some of your strength, my friend," Avelyn said, "else I shall soon perish."

Jill, on her knees before him, nodded, eager to help in any way.

Avelyn wasn't satisfied with that response, though, fearing that Jill did not understand the true measure of what he needed from her. "We shall become one," he said, his voice growing ever more breathless, "more intimate than anything you have ever known. Are you prepared for such a joining?"

"I hardly think you are in condition --"

"Not physically, oh no, not that!" Avelyn quickly corrected, wheezing out a laugh despite his obvious agony. "Spiritually."

Jill rocked back on her heels, regarding Avelyn curiously. A physical union she could not abide -- not with this man, not with Connor! But this cryptic talk of a spiritual joining did not seem so imposing. "Do what you must," she begged.

Avelyn regarded her a while longer, then finally nodded. He closed his eyes and began chanting softly, falling into the magic of the powerful hematite. Jill likewise closed her eyes, listening to the inflections of the chant.

Soon she no longer heard them, but rather felt them as if they were emanating from within her own body. And then she felt the intrusion, the spirit of Avelyn making its way into her.

Just his body was there, she realized, as again his spirit sought entry. Jill tried to break down her defenses, knew logically that if she did not let Avelyn have his way, he would surely die. She knew, too, that she had come to trust this man. He was a friend, of like mind and, on most points, morals.

She focused all her strength, trying vainly to invite the man in, trying vainly to facilitate the joining.

Then she was screaming, not aloud -- or perhaps aloud, she was too consumed to know. Avelyn came closer, so much closer. Too close. They seemed to be as one; Jill caught images of the brown and gray walls of a monastery, of an island covered with lush vegetation and trees with wide-fingered branches. Then she felt as if she was falling, looked into the face of a hawkish man who was falling beside her.

And then she felt the pain, of a stab wound, sharp and hot. It was not on her; she knew that. But it was right there beside her, pulling at her life force, sucking her into its depths. She resisted, tried to push Avelyn away, but it was too late now. They were joined and the monk fed as a vampire would feed.

Jill's eyes popped wide in horror and she jumped, startled, to find that the monk was still reclining in front of her.

The pain became another sensation, hot and private. Too private and yet shared. Jill instinctively recoiled, but she had nowhere to hide. She had let Avelyn in, and now she must suffer the experience.

For Avelyn, the union of spirits proved something wondrous. Even as he explored this unfamiliar use of hematite, he gave to Jill his understanding of the stories -- and it was so easy! He felt her response immediately, Jill passing her energy through the hematite into Avelyn's wounded body as smoothly as any fifth-year student of St.-Mere-Abelle. It struck Avelyn profoundly then that the monks might be teaching the usage of the stones in a terribly wrong manner, that if the instruction came in the spiritual mode, through the use of hematite, the students might progress much faster. Jill, he knew, would come away from this with more than a casual understanding of how to use the magic stones, and she was strong! Avelyn felt that. With practice, and more joinings, she could quickly rival all but the most powerful stone users of St.-Mere-Abelle -- and all because of this simple technique.

But dark images began to wash over Avelyn, scenes of men running amok with stone power. He dismissed the notion of training stone use through this method as quickly as he had entertained it, for he realized that the discipline involved in handling such power could not be taught in any easy way. Suddenly he felt guilty for what he had just given this woman he hardly knew, felt as if he had somehow betrayed God, giving a blessing without first asking for any guidance or sacrifice.

It was over in a few moments, with Avelyn back in his nearly healed body. Jill turned away, could not look upon the man.

"I am sorry," Avelyn said to her, his voice weary but all trace of physical pain gone. "You have saved my life."

Jill fought away the black wings of her past, the barrier that had for so long protected her against intimacy, the barrier that Avelyn had not crashed through but had somehow circumvented. With great effort, she managed to turn back and face him.

He was sitting upright now, smiling sheepishly, the cloud of pain and death gone from his plump features. "I am --" he started to apologize again, but Jill put a finger over his lips to silence him. She stood up and offered her hand, helping the portly monk to his feet.

Then Jill started down the road, like all the other roads that led them out of all the other towns. She offered not a word as they walked long into the night, replaying those terrible moments of their joining over and over in her mind, constantly telling herself that it had been necessary, and trying to fathom the images that Avelyn had given her, images, no doubt, from the monk's past. There was something else, though, some gift that Avelyn had left behind. Jill had never even heard of the magic stones before, let alone used one, but now she felt as if she could handle them fairly well, as if their secrets had been unlocked to her in the blink of an eye. On this point, as well, she kept quiet, not knowing yet whether Avelyn had given her a gift or a curse.

Avelyn, too, did nothing to break the silence. He, too, had much to contemplate: the feelings he had viewed within the tortured woman and the scenes that the joining had shown him images of a slaughter in a small town, probably somewhere in or near the Wilderlands. And Avelyn had a name for the place, a name the woman could not remember. He inquired privately about it in the next town the pair ventured through, and then, as the monk gained more and more knowledge, he began to steer Jill generally north.

It was with mixed feelings that Jill followed Brother Avelyn into Palmaris. The woman desperately wanted to seek out Graevis and Pettibwa, to tell them she was all right, to hug them and fall comfortably onto Pettibwa's soft bosom. All of that was, of course, tempered by her realization that she was, in effect, a deserter. A meeting with Connor could prove disastrous, and if Grady happened to spot her or learn of her visit, the greedy man would likely set the Kingsmen on her trail, if for no other reason than to ensure his inheritance.

Jill did go out one night, while Avelyn went down into the common room of the inn they had chosen, spouting his diatribes. She made her way silently across town, taking up a spot in the alleyway across from Fellowship Way. She sat there as the minutes became an hour, taking some comfort in the fact that many patrons came and went; apparently her little disaster hadn't ruined the Chilichunk name. Sometime later, Pettibwa came out of the inn, rubbing her hands on her apron, wiping the sweat from her brow, smiling, always smiling, as she went about the business of her life.

Jill's heart tugged at her to go out and embrace the woman, to run to Pettibwa as she would have run to her natural mother.

Something within, fear for Pettibwa, perhaps, stopped her though.

And then, quickly, the plump woman was gone, back into the bustle of the Way.

Jill left the alley hurriedly, thinking to go back to her room across town. Somehow she wound up on the back roof of the Way, in her private spot, basking one final time in those familiar feelings. Up here, she was, in effect, in Pettibwa's arms. Up here, Jill was Cat-the-Stray again, a younger girl in a world less complicated, with feelings less confusing.

She spent all night watching the stars, the gentle drift of Sheila, the occasional lazy cloud.

She returned to her room as dawn was breaking over Palmaris, to find Avelyn snoring loudly, his breath smelling of ale and more potent drinks, one eye blackened.

They remained in Palmaris, a city large enough to suffer the likes of the mad friar, for several more days, but Jill never ventured near Fellowship Way again.

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